Removal of Mendocino Water Tower Appealed to Higher Court

MENDOCINO, Calif. — The legal fight over a water tower on Main Street is moving to a state appeals court, after a Mendocino County judge dismissed two lawsuits that challenged the county's approval of a request from the owner to take it down.

Both sets of challengers have appealed those dismissals, keeping alive a dispute centered on one of the most prominent structures on Main Street and focused on how much say the county board of supervisors has over the Town of Mendocino's historic character.

Meanwhile, the tower is not in immediate danger of coming down. Brian Momsen, the attorney for the owner, Main Street Mendo, LLC, said the owner and one set of challengers are close to an agreement to leave it standing while an expedited appeal proceeds. He said the owner would still need a demolition permit before any removal. "No one need worry about it coming down overnight," he said.

At issue is the water tower at 45040 Main Street, which houses the staircase to Flow Restaurant & Lounge. The tower was built around 1904 and moved to its Main Street location in the 1970s.

The property owner, Main Street Mendo, LLC, applied to replace the tower's staircase with a new one. The Mendocino Historical Review Board (MHRB) denied the application three times. On appeal, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors reversed that last denial on May 20, 2025, voting 4-1 to approve the work.

Fifth District Supervisor Ted Williams, who represents Mendocino, cast the lone "no" vote.

The building owner and the county describe the project as a staircase replacement. The challengers describe it as demolishing an iconic, more-than-century-old water tower. The staircase is embedded in the tower.

Scott Roat, a Mendocino Coast real estate broker, filed the first lawsuit June 16, 2025 following the board of supervisors' action. "If you can take a three-time ruling from the Mendocino Historical Review Board and run it over the hill and have the supervisors overturn the local ruling — I think that is a bad precedent," he said. "My fundamental concern is you could conceivably get rid of every water tower in Mendocino and replace it with a Starbucks."

Roat filed in pro per because he was afraid that local people who wanted to preserve the water tower would miss the deadline for filing. He said he filed reluctantly because no one else was stepping in.

The Mendocino Preservation Fund and Citizens to Save the Water Tower — a nonprofit and an unincorporated association, both formed after the board of supervisor's vote — filed the second suit ten days later on June 26, 2025. The groups are represented by preservation attorney Susan Brandt-Hawley. Brandt-Hawley said she does not comment on pending cases.

A hearing on the central question of whether the tower is a historic resource was not held in either case. Judge Ann Moorman dismissed both lawsuits on procedural and pleading grounds.

Moorman dismissed Roat's case on April 21, 2026, finding among other things that he did not request a hearing on the writ of mandate within the 90 days required by state law and did not name the property owner as a party within the deadline. Moorman dismissed the Preservation Fund's case on June 16, 2026, ruling that the petitioners had not shown in their court filings that the tower was listed or eligible for listing as a historic resource.

Roat defended his filings in an email to MendoLocal.News. "We did request a hearing within 90 days. It was on the preliminary injunction rather than the writ itself, but the statute says 'request a hearing,' not what kind. More importantly, the case was actively litigated throughout and never dormant. Dismissing it on that distinction was legally wrong, elevated form over substance, and prevented the merits, including the community's historic-preservation concerns, from ever being heard."

The county counsel's office declined to answer most questions and pointed to the pending litigation, but it did say it intended to keep defending the board of supervisors' decision. "The County remains the primary defendant in the litigation and will be coordinating with the real party in interest in the continuing defense of the litigation, per our standard indemnification agreement," Deputy County Counsel Katharine Elliott wrote in response to questions. Under such an agreement, the property owner covers the county's costs.

In their court filings, the challengers argue the tower means more to the town than structural staircase support. The Preservation Fund's briefs say the tower sits within a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places and is an "iconic, stand-alone, culturally and aesthetically significant" feature of the town's skyline. Their filings say the owner seeks to demolish the tower and build a new staircase as access to the restaurant.

Momsen said removing the tower is not what the owner wanted, but that the tower has reached the end of its useful life. An engineer who examined it found the wood so rotted he could push a screwdriver into it, Momsen said, and rebuilding the tower would cost about $500,000. The owner instead applied to dismantle it and build a new staircase — a request Momsen said led to a lengthy back and forth as it moved through the review board.

Momsen said the dismissals reflect the legal standard. Whether a structure is historic is left to the local government, he said, and a court will uphold the county's finding as long as any substantial evidence in the record supports it. County staff reviewed newspaper articles and books, he said, and concluded that the tower — which was rebuilt shorter when it was moved — is "not the same structure."

Momsen also said a proposed settlement fell apart when the petitioners asked the owner to reconstruct the tower at the Kelley House Museum. Doing so would however required engineered plans and cost substantially more, he said, than simply handing over the salvaged materials as the owner had offered to do.